Sales and Marketing Performance Blog

Got a Killer-Product, but having trouble achieving its and your companies' potential?
These 6 short videos (hosted on Wistia) were produced by Dominic Rowsell of Hot Rivet. Dominic is author and copyright holder of "Why Killer Products Don't Sell".

In this series, Dominic provides new insights on buying behavior as he explains that there are four and only four buying cultures and suggests how to adapt B2B selling to match how customers buy. He explores the IMPACT (Identify-Mentor-Position-Assessment-Case-Transaction) buying process that every B2B transaction will go through, from initial idea to a purchase order.

If you are interested in The Challenger Sale method, you will see some very clear parallels in the Value-Created Selling model as the Mentor phase in the IMPACT buying process is typically where Challengers engage.

Regardless of your company and its stage in the technology adoption life-cycle, the IMPACT cycle and four buying cultures are relevant and useful for marketers and sellers to understand how people buy and what is needed to move a deal through each stage in the buying cycle.

Introduction to the Four Buying Cultures

Your company is fairly successful, but you're not about to be acquired by Google or Facebook for a billion dollars, so it's more of the same for the immediate future.

The business is more than 5 years old and great news - you got out of start-up mode quickly with the discovery of a scalable business model and ramped marketing and sales to achieve revenues in excess of $25M (or $50M or $100M).

According to business lists on Manta, there are more than 500 mid-size technology companies in the US with revenue between $20M and $500M.

Our Objective is Revenue and Profit growth.

I have met with leaders in a number of mid-market technology companies over the past year and nearly every one I met has an aggressive growth objective for the next 12 months. Growing at 30+% is easy to say, but not so easy to do.

• Achieving aggressive growth targets in an established market means taking market share....what are you going to do differently to achieve this?
• Achieving aggressive growth goals in a nascent market is about developing mind-share; finding and selling early adopters in a value-created way and working your way across the chasm, one deal at a time....would your company get found for the ideal Google query from someone with an idea looking to solve a problem that your company is perfectly placed to fix today?
• If leads are the oxygen of any B2B company, then competent sales execution is the muscle tissue. Somewhat surprisingly, leads - or the lack thereof and poor sales engagement and execution are the biggest barriers to success in many mid-size technology companies, it's seldom the product. These companies are old before their time and are facing a mid-life sales and marketing crisis.
  
   

This is the first in a series of articles that sets out the symptoms of the problem and how to solve it. Our next article will address how to overcome the lack of leads issue.

I need more leads

The two biggest problems in the quest for mind-share and market-share are not solved by the traditional approach to marketing pursued by many mid sized technology companies. As HubSpot's co-founders eloquently state in this brief video, the traditional approach to technology marketing is not working. Aside from social media marketing, not much has changed in Silicon Valley in the past 4 years.

 

Let me replay a sales call I made this week in Silicon Valley on a mid-sized technology company to see if there are parallels in your company.

I received an inbound lead from the VP Product Management around this post on measuring clarity in messaging. After an initial telephone dialogue we agreed to meet in their offices.
In our conversation the following issues came to light.

• We are not getting enough workable leads
• We have a strong brand, but plenty of competiton in our product markets.
• We get 50,000+ website visits a month. (Subsequent analaysis reveals that 95+% of the search traffic arriving at the site is based on a keyword with either the company name or product name in the search string. This means that protential prospects doing research to solve real problems will not find them, but will find their competitors.
• We are paying a lead generation firm to generate leads for us and we are not happy with the quality of the leads or the ROI on this investment.
• We have a marketing automation platform, but we are struggling to overcome a bunch of issues and it doesn't help fill the top of the funnel with new leads.
• Our Website message is fuzzy and it needs a refresh, our market positioning is vague and people can't really understand how our channel creates value through integrating our product.
• We have a marketing person doing social media and have 5000+ Facebook fans and we are active on Twitter with a few thousand fans, but they are not driving leads that turn into customers.
• We do exhibit at tradeshows and they are a good source of leads.
• We have a fairly big Google Adwords budget and this is our primary source of quality leads.
• We publish a couple of blogs per week, but the readership is low and we get few comments or shares.

How important is clarity in your messaging and how clear is your message?

Sales and marketing are dependent on the clarity of your message to win mindshare, generate leads; and to engage, diagnose and qualify new opportunities, yet clarity is often an afterthought. 

I was prompted to write this article after a call this week with a technology company based in the Mid-West. This company has World leading technology, great vision and is completely failing in marketing.

They are in the red zone. When you arrive on their Website it is not possible to figure out that they do on the home page. Nor is it possible to figure out what they do by clicking on the CTA. You have to click on the product page to find the description of what they do and it's in 10 point font in the middle of the first paragraph. This is not a joke....this is a disaster.

Why Invest in Message Clarity?

Clarity attracts visitors, clarity engages visitors, clarity converts visitors into leads, clarity differentiates, clarity is monetizable, clarity wins new customers, clarity attracts employees, clarity builds mindshare, clarity wins investors, clarity builds market-share. You will see an new and clearer Admarco.net Website in the near future in pursuit of our own message clarity.

How do you measure the effectiveness or signal quality of your message for Inbound Marketing purposes?

For radio operators in the military and other organizations, the signal quality is reported on two scales; the first is for signal strength, and the second for signal clarity. Both these scales range from one to five, where one is the worst and five is the best. The listening station reports these numbers separated with the word "by". "Five by five" therefore means a signal that has excellent strength and perfect clarity — the most understandable signal possible.

This is a good metaphor to explore how well you are communicating over the Internet.

I spent Yesterday with the Duarte organization in Mountain View, CA. in a one day Resonate story development Workshop.

This was an excellent workshop that helped me identify the core elements of my story. I came away from it with the basis for a story that will resonate with a much broader audience and that I expect will improve my engagement and the outcome of meetings.

Getting your ideas to Resonate with the Audience

I have been using ideas from Nancy Duarte's book Resonate for about a year, but the workshop brought my story to life. The techniques learned will change the way I present myself and my services in future. I am applying my brain in idle moments around how these ideas can be applied to any communication, not just presentations.

My Story Map created in the Resonate Workshop

10 Rules for More Engaging Sales Presentations

The course was presented by Michael Pacchione and it was about story; we created our own story, step by step as the day progressed, but we talked a lot about presentations, because presentations without a story are boring.

The first rule for this eclectic but important list of ten presentation rules for salespeople is Nancy Duarte's Golden Rule.

1. Never give a presentation you wouldn't want to sit through yourself. Such good advice, most presentations are boring because they lack story, or the sales person, product or the company is the hero of the story, instead of the buyer. Presentations turn into an ordeal when they fail to engage the customer's imagination and emotion, usually because they are all about you and your stuff.
    
2. Spend the time prior to a meeting researching the client's company, instead of customizing their presentation, you will sell more. This is a new rule based on feedback from Laura Olsen on a blog post comment from http://www.tinyurl.com/leave-the-laptop-behind
   
   
3. If a salesperson gives a Powerpoint presentation on the first meeting, they won't get a second one.
    
4. Bullets Kill - One idea per slide and no bullets, Edward Tufte
   
   
5. Simple hand drawn images and a story work way better than complex PowerPoint geometry with bullets, boxes and drop shadows. This image is from Dan Heath's Switch presentation. It took 10 minutes to draw on my touch mouse.
   
   
6. Guy Kawasaki rule. 
   Maximum 10 slides, Maximum 20 minutes, Minimum 30 point text.
    
7. Seth Godin's 5 rules
   
   1. No more than six words on a slide. EVER. There is no presentation so complex that this rule needs to be broken.
   2. No cheesy images. Use professional stock photo images.
   3. No dissolves, spins or other transitions. (Prezi users take note)
   4. Sound effects can be used a few times per presentation, but never use the sound effects that are built in to the program. Instead, rip sounds and music from CDs and leverage the Proustian effect this can have. If people start bouncing up and down to the Grateful Dead, you’ve kept them from falling asleep, and you’ve reminded them that this isn’t a typical meeting you’re running.
   5. Don’t hand out print-outs of your slides. They don’t work without you there.

 8. Create a STAR Moment. This is another one from Nancy Duarte. A STAR moment is and acronym for Something They'll Always Remember. This takes a bit of thought and may need props and preparation, but if you want to differentiate and you are in a beauty pageant where everyone looks just like you, it might be worth doing. Here is an example of a STAR Moment in the Jamie Oliver Ted video...it's a great talk and the STAR moment is about 13 minutes in. 

 9. You are the presentation, the client wants to know what you know and how you can help them, the medium is secondary. Know what you want the outcome of the meeting to be, know who's going to be there and their issues/interest areas prior to the meeting.

According to extensive research conducted by the Corporate Executive Board, published in The Challenger Sale, 53% of the contribution to customer loyalty comes from the sales experience itself....not from your presentation.

10. Do not present when a conversation is possible - unless you are specifically asked by the client to present and you know what the outcome of a successful presentation will be.

 

Recently I had the pleasure of leading a global Whiteboard Selling Enablement Symposium for Siemens in Cologne Germany. Since working as an affiliate of Whiteboard Selling, this is the first training program I have led, which included Chinese native speakers.

The Early Days at Sun - Framemaker presentations

I have led product sales training events for Chinese and Korean native language speakers when at Sun Microsystems. The outcome of the Whiteboard Symposium in Cologne could not have been more different than the outcome from one of my former Sun training days.

Despite my best efforts to speak slowly and clearly when training for Sun and a lot of effort in creating material-in English, I expect that less than 30% of my material was understood. I recall working very hard on rapport and asking questions to check comprehension and was often greeted by blank looks and silence.

The audience would sit passively, attentive, trying to understand my accent and decode the slides....they were created in Framemaker on a Sun Workstation as in those days, former Sun CEO and co-founder Scott McNeally banned the use of Microsoft products....there were images (clip-art) and a lot of bullets (I cringe when I think about it).

Comprehension is the Presenters Problem

Lack of comprehension was not the fault of my audience, it was mine as the trainer. 20 years ago I was a missionary in getting our resellers to start selling Sun Servers. I did not speak the language, and although we had cultural sensitivity training, on my own assessment, I did a poor job of communicating the value of the Sun Server offerings for banks.

This is still how a large percentage of product training is done, although it is probably translated and presented in PowerPoint by a native speaker today. The audience sits passively through a product presentation, answers a quiz, leaves with a brochure and the URL of the sales portal where the material including .pdf's and presentations reside.

Sales Training using the Whiteboard Selling Symposium method

At the Siemens event I was asked if the during the role-play workshop, team members could deliver the whiteboard story in their native language and the answer was an emphatic yes.

Salespeople formed groups by native language when the role-playing began.

As the facilitator, I did not have to understand the native language to judge comprehension because I could see the whiteboard story develop and observe the interaction among the team members. During the workshop each sales person either drew and told the story or watched and listened to the whiteboard develop up to 10 times.

The outcome of the training was that salespeople could engage clients and use a whiteboard to tell their story the next day, although it may not have been perfect, their comprehension and mastery of the story was such that they knew it and could do it.

Doing the rounds of the role-play groups I heard presentations in Swedish, French, German, Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese and English.

It was interesting to observe the interaction between buyer and seller in the role-plays and the way different ethnic groups presented. Some more formal and reserved and others lively, interactive and funny...others completely departing from the whiteboard story design to create their own version of the story.

Accelerating Ramp Times

Slow ramp-time for new-hire sales people is the #1 problem for sales managers in onboarding. Similarly, new product launches seldom deliver the sell-through results marketing planners anticipate. 

Using traditional product training approaches it takes months longer than most sales managers would like before salespeople are confident enough to engage senior executives.

• What would happen to your sales results if your sales team learned your top 3 product/service whiteboard stories at new hire? Net-App new hires learn and are tested on 3 whiteboards before they go on their first sales call. 
• Would it be useful if when new hires make their first call they are confident in telling your story, know what the likely objections might be and how to handle them and know what questions to ask in discovering the client issues? 
• Would it help if the core group of salespeople could differentiate the value in using your products/services and could engage senior executives in conversation around their issues and have your capabilities unfold naturally in that conversation?

Take-aways

• Active Learning using role-playing, whiteboarding or other participative methodology is key to comprehension in sales training
• Encourage native language presentations to build comprehension and mastery of the material
• Why not give whiteboarding a try at your next sales conference or regional get together

I saw this article from Seth Godin last week "Why Lie" on why prospects lie to salespeople in another forum and commented on it. I'm not sure if you saw it, so I have referenced it below and want to add a comment and a few links to resources as I have written on this subject before.

Why lie?

With so much at stake in every prospect encounter, why would I promote the idea of leaving the laptop, PowerPoint presentation and LCD behind?

I've been working with sales and marketing teams for the past 8 years as a consultant to help align sales and marketing messages and create clarity around value creation. With one or two exceptions from the hundreds of presentations I've seen, they all follow the same format.

It's all about me, my big office, my stuff, my awards, my customers (slide 4), my partners, my products, my compelling features and my unforgettable and highly differentiated benefits. 

It's like there was a gold standard master PowerPoint presentation written 20 years ago and every presentation since has inherited the format....only the buildings and the names change.
If you want a good laugh and some introspection take a look at the Chicken, Chicken, Chicken video below (Thanks to Neil Warren for making me aware of this).

The Challenger Sale (TCS), by Matt Dixon and Brent Adamson is an important book for sales professionals and sales managers involved in complex B2B sales as it proves that a number of commonly held beliefs about sales behavior are obsolete. 

Unlike many other "how-to-sell" books based on theories and ideas on improving sales performance, The Challenger Sale is underpinned by rich and extensive data from more than 6,000 sales professionals from more than 100 member companies, gathered over the past four years.

You are a Prospect for Challenger Sales Training

I don't have a problem (other reviewers did have), that TCS is produced by the Corporate Executive Board (CEB) and that the CEB is a member organization providing for-profit sales training for its members. They want to sell you Challenger Sales Development Services...in the same way every other author of sales performance literature wants to sell their services. It happens that we are very much aligned in our view of the sea-change that has occurred in buyer behavior and the need for new approaches in engaging buyers at the moments of truth when face-face.

If you are selling complex software, enterprise hardware or services in a B2B environment and haven't read The Challenger Sale yet, then perhaps this article might convince you it's worth reading at least once...regardless of where you get your sales development services.

Relationship Selling is Dead

I and many of my peers were brought up in a World where, as a territory rep, our goal was to establish a relationship with the buyer, and over time, gain access to the organization to earn the opportunity to position our products/solutions.

Through factor analysis of the data, TCS identifies the five distinct profiles or behavioral tendencies of sales people of which the relationship sales person has been the least successful in the past four years for both transactional and complex sales.

Take-away:

Today, when buyers have an abundance of information about vendors products and solutions at their fingertips, any salesperson that brings insight to the table that can create new opportunities for the buying organization can have a relationship based on that value. Buyers simply have no time or need of relationships with salespeople who do not create value.

Challengers are Winners, Rain or Shine

Based on an analysis of the data, in transactional selling, the star performers outperform the core by 59%. Hard Workers are the top producers in transactional selling.
In complex B2B selling environments, the research indicates that star performers outperformed core performers by almost 200%. As the sale becomes more complex, the gap between the core and star performers widens dramatically…companies are becoming more dependent on fewer sales people to carry the day. It happens that Challengers were the only cohort to make their numbers in the downturn and today are the top performing behavior type by a wide margin.

The 5 Sales Profiles

Selling Psychology: Why it pays to know Transactional Analysis in Sales

I read David Sandler’s book “You Can't Teach a Kid to ride a Bike at a Seminar” in 2002 and was intrigued with some of his ideas. David Sandler, to my knowledge was the first sales trainer to recognize the value and popularize the use of Transactional Analysis techniques (TA) in sales. Transactional Analysis is a branch of psychology and psychotherapy technique founded by Eric Berne in the 1950's, and made popular in the book Games People Play. Click here for an introduction to TA

Sandler started out selling sales training programs on 78 records. He made thousands of calls and observed that it had become an accepted belief in Western culture, that sales-people are fair-game. Furthermore, he observed that many buyers believe that it’s OK to waste a salesperson's time and resources, deliberately mislead them and even lie or with-hold the truth from them.

Sandler believed the use of TA and other manipulative techniques were the only way salespeople could level the playing-field in a relationship that was heavily tilted in favor of the buyer.

Sandler died in 1995, but his "negative reverse selling", and "struggling child" are pure Transactional Analysis techniques applied to selling situations and live on through generations of Sandler training professionals.

The following is a brief introduction of the ego-state model and a Flash video of a scenario for using a complementary transaction. 

 

The Ego-State Model

At any given time, a person experiences and manifests their personality through a mixture of behaviors, thoughts and feelings. Typically, according to Transactional Analysis, there are three ego-states that people consistently use:

Adult: a state in which people behave, feel, and think in response to what is going on in the "here-and-now," using all of their resources as an adult human being with many years of life experience to guide them.
Parent: a state in which people behave, feel, and think in response to an unconscious mimicking of how their parents (or other parental figures) acted, or how they interpreted their parent's actions.
Child: a state in which people revert to behaving, feeling and thinking similarly to how they did in childhood.
We experience constant movement between all the ego states in response to thoughts, events, people, and memories.

 

 

Transactional Analysis - Complementary Child-Parent Transaction "The Struggling Child"

The following technique is useful in gaining access to executives and gathering information.

If you are selling SaaS applications or B2B products/services over the Internet and like to use a whiteboard for discovery and to tell your story, Paper-Show offers precise digital image and text creation in real-time and when combined with Gotomeeting HD Faces, provides an exceptional visual communication experience for video conferencing. 

Paper Show consists of an over-sized pen with an infra-red camera in the nose. The pen uses a blue-tooth transmitter to communicate its precise position on the A-4 sheet to a USB receiver key which holds the Paper-show application and all of the drawings you have created in Paper-Show.  
The pen is positioned in the paper-Show application on the computer screen in the same location as on paper so that when the screen is shared in a video conference, a real time whiteboarding session is enabled.